Land of lost men. Male characters in the abyss in Spanish cinema of transition to democracy

Abstract

The study on male characters in the Spanish cinema remains low. In these times when much of the research focuses on the investigation of characters and television stories looking for a new audiovisual masculinity, it is appropriate to look back and press the moment the breakdown of patriarchal conventions occurs in buil­ding male characters. This article comes to the stage of the Spanish democratic Transition, when the female character is released and begins a transformation, as many studies have already shown, in a visible manner. However, male characters in the Spanish cinema of the twentieth century 70-80 emerge with a change of skin, showing the contradictions and fears, and especially the need of a metamorphosis, parallel to the social and political evolution that the country was suffering. Men also in some Spanish films of the moment denote a comprehensive crisis in a turning point between the breakdown of the old regime, the patriarchy, and look to the future of the “new man” who must take and implement, not with little effort and disorientation, new freedoms, new women and new democracy.